#StLSeries – the Lou got Texture

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Nevermind the 91 municipalities of St. Louis County, the vehemently independent (and proud) St. Louis City is comprised of a whopping 79 neighborhoods, each with their own distinct styles and textures. Architecture would provide the most obvious examples, which will be the subject of my next blog post. For now, here are some close-ups around only a handful of the nearly seven-dozen hoods that constitute this River City:

muraleyes

There are new murals and graffiti in places where there was previously just brick and cinder. I think this was on South Broadway, south of I-55.

words to the wise

Is the sign’s legality still valid if it’s weathered and worn? Spotted in Kosciusko.

Not what you would expect to find in a major American city’s Downtown, but St. Louis is prone to prove you wrong.

Fire hydrants for me are a major indicator of a town’s personality. In Baltimore they’re orange; in Santa Rosa, CA they look like this; here’s one in Bayview, San Francisco; while Bethlehem, PA hydrants somehow look Pennsylvanian. Funny how that works. And in the Lou they’re decorated, neighborhood by neighborhood and sometimes block by block. This one’s covered with the city’s flag.

Driving through The Grove I didn’t get much time to snap this, but you can see some former archways are now painted trompe-l’œil style.

These two things were wryly sort of looking at each other. Tehehehehehe

art by Wayne St. Wayne!

If you want to get lost in texture, go to Mangia Italiano on South Grand Boulevard. This image is about 2′ x 3′ of an 8′ x 40′ mural (that took a decade to complete) by local legend Wayne St. Wayne, the epitome of a living artist.

OK so clearly Cherokee Street is a hotbed of texture and activity; which could be Gravois Park, Benton Park, Benton Park West, or Marine Villa, depending on which side of Cherokee Street and South Jefferson Avenue you are one. So really Cherokee Street is its own identity, so here’s a glimpse of what you might find on a walk down that street: